


your lipstick stain is a work of art

by skatzaa



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Background Darcy Lewis/Other, Canon Compliant, F/F, F/M, Jewish Darcy Lewis, Jewish Jane Foster, Past Jane Foster/Thor, background Jane Foster/Other, endgame Jane/Darcy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 03:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16210211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatzaa/pseuds/skatzaa
Summary: Five times Jane and Darcy helped each other through a break up, and one time they didn't have to.





	your lipstick stain is a work of art

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Haywire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haywire/gifts).



> Haywire, I hope you like it!! I've harbored a secret love for Jane/Darcy for a long time, but this is the first time I've tried my hand at them.
> 
> This focuses just as much on Darcy and Jane's friendship, perhaps even moreso, but I've always been a sucker for that sort of thing. Sorry if I got anything wrong with the timelines, I haven't watched the Dark World in years. Title is taken from "She Looks So Perfect" by 5 Seconds of Summer, because it came on the radio the other day and made me feel old when I remembered all of the lyrics.

1.

Jane jabbed the ‘end call’ button as viciously as she could, face screwing up when her finger bends a little too far in the wrong direction.

“That good for nothing  _ jackass _ ,” she seethes, shoving her phone into the pocket of her jeans. She balls her hands into fists and braces them on her hips, looking out into the desert. Her little converted gas station is on the edge of town, so all Jane can see are the scrubby bushes they call trees and a cactus or two. And sand. Lots of sand. She sighs, shoulders dropping. “What am I even  _ doing _ out here.”

Sure, she has grant money to do this, and the permission of the university, but she’s fairly certain she only got either, let alone both, because Erik pulled a few strings. The committee probably just awarded her the research grant to get her out of their hair for a while, because  _ everyone _ knows that Dr. Foster’s theories are pure nonsense. 

Behind her, the door to the trailer creaks open. Jane doesn’t look behind her as her new intern, Darcy, says, “Is everything alright, Dr. Foster?”

Jane sighs again and glances over her shoulder. Darcy is still mostly inside the trailer, with her head stuck out at an angle that leaves her curled hair hanging over one shoulder. Her makeup is impeccable as usual, even though they haven’t seen anyone all day. Jane, on the other hand, is wearing the same flannel she wore yesterday. And also maybe the day before that; it’s all sort of blurring together at the moment. 

“I told you that you can call me Jane,” she says. Jane isn’t quite sure why Darcy  _ isn’t _ : she doesn’t have the wide-eyed respect of freshmen who are still used to the dynamics of high school, nor the tired apathy of the grad students who, often, resent Jane’s theories or her doctorate or both. Darcy is just a first semester senior, looking to round out her degree before she writes her thesis in the spring, if poli sci students even write theses. “And it’s—nothing.”

Darcy steps fully into the doorway, so Jane gives her the courtesy of at least turning to face her while they speak. In her pocket her phone buzzes; it’s either Donald, apologizing or antagonizing her, or it’s Erik, who’s either “just checking in” because he’s worried about her research progress or “ _ just checking in _ ” because he managed to hear about the breakup already. She doesn’t want to deal with either of them. 

“No offense, Jane,” Darcy says, smiling slightly. The color of her lipstick is very flattering, and Jane can see why she chooses to wear it. “But you’re an awful liar. Plus, I heard like, that entire conversation.”

Jane makes the effort to relax a little, letting go of the tension in the muscles of her forehead and around her eyes. 

Darcy brings her hand up to touch the door frame and seems to contemplate her fingers for a moment. “Sorry about your boyfriend.”

Jane tangles her fingers into her hair and lifts her hands, trying to ease the weight of it dragging on her skull.

“It’s alright,” she says. “It wasn’t the best relationship.”

“Breaking up still sucks though,” Darcy says. “Wanna get a drink?”

“ _ Yes _ ,” Jane tells her, thankful Darcy was the one to apply to her internship posting. She looks down at her two (three?) day old flannel. “Just let me… change first.”

Jane moves past Darcy, brushing her knuckles against the door frame out of habit and sets about trying to find a shirt that’s clean. She should probably go to the laundromat tomorrow.

“Hey Jane?” Darcy asks, lingering in the doorway.

“Hmm?”

“Can we get a mezuzah?”

Jane looks up from the t-shirt in her hands—she’s trying to remember if it was her dad’s or Donald’s, because that will drastically change her reaction to it—and blinks at Darcy. She waits a little too long, trying to get the question to process, and by then Darcy is already smiling thinly and waving off any response.

“It’s alright,” she says, though it obviously isn’t. “Don’t worry about it.”

Jane gives up and just pulls the t-shirt on over her flannel. It’s good enough. She says, “Actually, I think I have one in one of these boxes. My mom gave it to me for my dorm room, ages ago.”

Darcy looks—overbalanced. She swallows, obvious even from the other side of the trailer. Jane gives her a smile.

“I’m not particularly religious,” she says, feeling apologetic for no real reason. “But Mom thought it was important, so I’ve kept it. I try to put it up everywhere I live I just—forgot, in the excitement of arriving.”

Darcy smiles at her again, and this time it’s real and a little teary. 

“Well then,” she says, darting forward to grab Jane’s arm and drag her toward the door. “That will be our first priority,  _ after _ we get drunk and complain about your ex.”

Jane rolls her eyes, but she goes along with it anyway. It’ll be nice, to get out of the house—or trailer-slash-converted gas station, as it were—for a bit. And she could  _ really  _ use a drink.

(“Darcy?”

“Yes, Dr. Foster?”

“This is a strip club. A strip club called  _ Cheeks _ .”

“Yep.”

“ _ Why _ are we at a strip club called  _ Cheeks _ ?”

“I’ve been told it’s the best place to drink in Puente Antiguo. Also, it’s the only place to drink here.”

“Of course it is.”)

2.

Jane surfaces from her equations at the sound of a tiny sniff. Her eyes are burning, her back aches from hunching over her desk for too long, and her hand is cramping around her pencil. She looks up, squinting into the darkness, trying to hear where the sound came from. 

Nothing. But it’s hard to see past the little pool of golden light spilling out from her desk lamp, and she’s obviously been here for far too long. Why weren’t the streetlights on? Normally they would catch on the large windows, but not tonight.

“Darcy?” she says, voice scratchy and too soft. Jane clears her throat. “What’re you doing in here? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Darcy says, falsely casual, and Jane swings around to peer in the direction of her voice. “Just wanted to come check on you. You’ve been out here all day.”

“Have I?” Jane asks faintly, trying to check her watch. Her wrist is bare; she must have left the watch on the back of the toilet again. But of course, she knows it’s been all day. It wasn’t dark when she started.

She rubs at her forehead with one hand and tries to blink away the exhaustion. There’s something she’s forgetting.

Darcy sniffs again, still hiding somewhere in the back of the lab. 

“Hey,” Jane says, remembering. “Your date with Lucy, that was tonight, wasn’t it? How’d that go?”

Silence. As she waits, Jane stretches out her arms and tenses, popping her elbows and then her shoulders. She really should know better than to spend all day hunched over like that; she’s not eighteen anymore and her body wants her to remember that.

“ _ Jane _ ,” Darcy says, and her voice breaks.

Jane is up and stumbling before she fully processes, trying to find Darcy in the dark. She bumps into a table and curses as the corner digs into her hip. She reaches out and steadies the equipment on instinct, still focused on the spot where she thinks she last heard Darcy.  _ Why _ wasn’t there any light?

“Shit,” she says as she bumps into another table. Something clatters as it falls but she can’t see it, and anyway, her friend is upset.

Darcy laughs, tremulous, and says, “Here, you’re going to hurt yourself—”

The overhead lights flicker on. Jane jerks back and blinks dark spots out of her vision. It takes a few seconds for the light not to hurt. When her eyes adjust she sees Darcy, off to the side of where Jane had been heading toward. At least she was somewhat close.

Darcy’s eyes are red and so is the tip of her nose, the surest sign that she’s been crying.

“It didn’t go well,” Jane guesses. “I’m sorry, Darcy.”

Darcy smiles, her lips pressed tightly together.

“No, um.” She takes a deep breath. “She broke up with me.”

Jane closes the distance between them and pulls Darcy into a hug. Normally, they’re almost exactly the same height, but Darcy is still wearing the heels Jane helped her pick out last night. Jane ends up with her nose shoved into the top of Darcy’s shoulder because of how tightly they’re holding one another.

“I’m sorry sweetie,” Jane says into the fabric of Darcy’s pea coat. It’s not cold enough yet in New Mexico to warrant such a heavy jacket, but Darcy likes the way it makes her silhouette look.

Darcy squeezes her a little tighter, face turned into Jane’s hair. 

“I really liked her.”

“I know.” Jane smoothes her hand up and down Darcy’s back a few times before she pulls back. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind Darcy’s ear. “Come on, let’s go change into pajamas. I think we still have some coconut rum left.”

“I love rum,” Darcy says. Jane laughs and leads them out of the lab.

“I know.”

(?.

Jane reclines back on the lounge chair and inhales the smell of the wood smoke. Beside her, in her own chair, Darcy folds her hands over her stomach and looks up at the night sky. 

Out in the desert, a coyote howls. 

“D’ya think,” Darcy starts, shifting a little because it’s her turn to sit in the bad chair with the springs that dig into your back, “it actually counts as a breakup if there was only some flirting and one smokin’ hot kiss?”

Jane sighs. Trust Darcy to be overly invested.

“I’m not sure,” she says. She stares at the flames curling in on themselves in the fire pit. “I guess it depends on whether he’s coming back or not.”

Darcy doesn’t have a response for that. Instead she just holds out her hand. Jane takes it, grateful to have her friend with her.)

3.

“So how did things go with Richard?” Darcy asks over breakfast.

Jane raises her eyes from her waffles and fixes her with a look. 

“After everything that just happened, you want to know about my  _ date _ ?”

Darcy rolls her eyes and takes an obnoxiously large bite of her cereal. She at least has the good grace to finish chewing before she starts talking again, but the crunching alone is enough to have Jane’s eye twitching. “Well, duh.”

“Darcy,” Jane says, in the most serious tone she can muster. “I was just transported to another planet, where I touched some sort of glowing thing I probably shouldn’t have touched. My sort of ex-boyfriend from two years ago appeared and brought me to a  _ third _ planet, and then portals opened up in the sky and we all almost died. But you want to know about  _ Richard _ .”

Darcy waves her spoon in the direction of Jane’s face. “I was the one to set you up with Richard, I’m invested now. But I’m happy to hear how your reunion kiss with Thor went, if you’d rather.”

Jane tightens her fingers around her fork. “You don’t know there was a reunion kiss. And  _ you _ were the one who interrupted my date with Richard.”

Darcy takes another bite of her cereal. Incredulous, Jane cuts off a piece of her waffles with a little more force than is strictly necessary and shoves it in her mouth. She chews grumpily.

In the other room, Erik must have woken up, because Jane can hear him shuffling around. It still feels a little strange, to not have her senses enhanced to the point of being painful. Eric steps out into the kitchen, still in his boxers and a rumpled button down. 

Darcy and Jane exchange a look. 

“Hey bud,” Darcy says. “You gonna put some pants on? Or should we just get some coffee in you?”

Erik squints at her. His hair is a disaster and Jane’s pretty sure his shirt buttons aren’t lined up properly.

“Coffee it is,” Jane decides. She stands and rounds the table, heading for the coffee machine set up on the counter. Darcy reaches out and snags Jane’s wrist.

“Hey, I’m sorry about Richard.” She looks up at Jane and pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her free hand. “No more blind dates, I promise.”

Jane smiles and presses a kiss to the top of Darcy’s head before going to deal with Erik’s coffee.

4–5.

“I broke up with Thor.”

Jane sees Darcy’s head shoot up, her mouth slack with surprise, but she busies herself with hanging her coat on the hook by the door. It’s probably not fair to just drop that on her friend without any sort of build up, but there’s been a little swirling pool of anxiety in the pit of her stomach since Thor disappeared on the Bifrost, and she needs to talk to her friend about it. 

Darcy still hasn’t said anything, so Jane turns to face her, biting her lip as she tries to figure out how to phrase her apology. On the couch, Darcy reaches up and adjusts her glasses. It’s a nervous habit, and seeing it only makes Jane’s anxiety worse. 

She folds her arms tightly against her stomach, trying to squeeze the worry out. The silence is too thin, too stretched in weird ways, so she says, “I guess, technically, we broke up with each other. Or, he agreed with me when I said we should break up.” Darcy is still staring at her. “I don’t know if that makes it worse somehow? Sure, I was the one who started the breakup but he  _ agreed _ with me, which means he…”

Jane lets herself trail off, because she realizes how self absorbed it sounds. 

Darcy shifts so she can rest her arm on the back of the couch. “That’s quite the coincidence, because I had to have the ‘I just don’t think this is going to work out between us’ talk with Ian today.”

Jane feels her eyes go wide and says, “Crap, Darcy, I’m sorry—”

“Totally my doing.” Darcy waves away her apology and smiles, but Jane doesn’t imagine the way her smile droops after only a moment. Darcy motions with a tilt of her head. “I was just getting into the best part of my post-sort-of-breakup routine, if you want to join me.”

Jane turns back long enough to kick off her shoes and make sure the apartment door is locked, and then she shuffles over to the couch, trying to enjoy the slide of her fuzzy socks against the wooden floorboards. When she gets close enough, she can see that Darcy has, in fact, started in on a simplified version of her breakup evening plans. There’s plastic on the coffee table that looks like it was the seal for a Ben & Jerry’s carton, and the case for the Keira Knightley  _ Pride & Prejudice  _ is on top of the DVD player, though the TV isn’t on.

Jane sits down and squeezes her hands between her knees. She sneaks a glance at Darcy, who gives her a wry grin and raised eyebrow. 

“I’m sorry about Ian,” Jane tells her.

“Really not a big deal, Jane,” Darcy says. Jane ducks her head, which makes Darcy roll her eyes. “Come here, you know cuddling is part of the deal.”

Jane scooches closer and lets Darcy arrange them however she’d like. She ends up with her head on Darcy’s shoulder and her legs bunched up in Darcy’s lap. She picks up the remote and clicks the power button.

“Do we have any extra blankets?” Jane asks. She isn’t cold, just… sad.

Darcy reaches back over her head and pulls down the big blanket they bought in New Mexico. She tucks it around them while Jane presses play for the DVD player. 

The opening notes of  _ Dawn _ smooth down the anxiety still lingering behind her lungs. She curls further into Darcy’s side and allows Longbourn to sweep her away. 

+1.

“Hey Jane?”

Jane didn’t glance up from her latest readings. There was something  _ off _ about them, not like the Bifrost  _ or _ the Convergence events and she couldn’t make heads or tails of them. “What’s up Darcy?”

“I think it’s time to take a break.” That made Jane look up, pen still poised to circle another discrepancy. She was going to need glasses soon, the strain was just getting to be too much to deal with. Darcy smiles at her and Jane’s eyes caught on the shade of her lipstick. Darcy motions with a hand. “Come on, up. Get over here.”

With a final glance, Jane abandons her paperwork at the dining room table and sits next to Darcy on the couch. She rubs at her eyes.

“Still can’t figure it out?” Darcy asks, voice sympathetic. Jane shakes her head and sighs. There’s a tension headache building above and behind her ears, so she reaches up and pulls her hair out of its ponytail.

“I don’t know what’s going on in Sokovia but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” she says. 

She’s not looking fr a response and Darcy doesn’t give one. Instead, they sit together, enjoying the quiet. Jane waits until the numbers have stopped flying through her mind.

Darcy has her feet up on the couch and is inspecting her toenail polish. She says, “I don’t know if I say this often enough, but our apartment is so much better than that trailer.”

Jane glances around. It is a nice apartment, paid for in part by her research stipend through the university and in part by her work with SHIELD. And it  _ is _ better than that trailer set up they had when they first started working together. 

And then it strikes Jane that this isn’t her apartment, it’s  _ their _ apartment and that it’s only been the two of them for years now. Even before Thor and everything that came along with him, Darcy had helped her.

She looks at Darcy who’s still looking at her toes.

“Hey,” she says. Darcy hums but doesn’t turn her attention away from her purple nails. “Do you want to go on a date sometime?”

Darcy smiles, a slim curve of red against white teeth, and then she turns to face Jane. 

“Jane, I’m pretty sure we’ve been partners for at least three years now.”

Oh. That would explain… a lot, actually. 

“Oh,” she says. “Well, does that mean I can—”

Darcy leans forward. She tastes like lipstick and nothing in particular and it’s heady to be able to kiss her. 

Jane slides her hand up from Darcy’s shoulder to her neck, and then the curve of her jaw. She pulls back, readjusts her angle, and ducks back in for another kiss only to bump her face against Darcy’s glasses. Darcy giggles, but she doesn’t take her hands from their spot under Jane’s shirt. Her palms are warm against Jane’s hips. 

“So,” Jane says. She feels flushed and there’s something warm taking up residence in her chest, behind her lungs.

“So,” Darcy parrots. 

Jane kisses her again. She doesn’t know what it will take to mess up that lipstick, but she’s willing to put in the effort to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! If there's anything I didn't handle properly, please feel free to tell me! I'm always looking to improve my writing. Comments and kudos are appreciated but, of course, never required <3
> 
> Read on


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